Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Recycling

In Praise of Trashy Art

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Glass Eyes, Recycled Art Show, Credit: Pictoscribe

We’re big on recycling in my house. We dutifully separate our glass and recyclables and drag our bins out to the curb each week. We take outdated electronics and computers to the local computer recycling center. We turn old clothes into rags, and my son draws on the back side of scrap paper. But I think we can get a lot more creative when it comes to reuse. More and more artists are turning old junk into paintings, jewelry, sculptures, furniture, and even buildings.

Traditional art supplies contain toxins that can be dangerous to our health and to ecosystems. What better way to make creating art more green than to use something Americans create 230 million tons of every year: garbage?

Are you not convinced that garbage can be beautiful? Check out these galleries of recycled art:

And my favorite:

I’ve seen lots of nifty recycled art at our local craft market: night lights made out of cat food cans, sculptures made out of computer chips, and handbags made from old tires. And a search for recycled goods on Etsy turns up 147,500 results. It makes me wonder, what might I turn an old milk carton into? A birdhouse, a lantern, a dish-washing robot?

Do you create or admire recycled art? Tell me about it.

A Snapshot of Waste in America

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Photo credit: D’Arcy Norman

Pounds of trash the average American generated in a day in 1960:

2.68

Pounds of trash the average American generated in a day in 2008:

4.5

Percentage of U.S. municipal solid waste that was recycled in 1960:

6.4

Percentage of U.S. municipal solid waste that was recycled in 2008:

33.2

Percent increase in the amount of waste recycled in the U.S. between 1960 and 2008:

1,480

Number of aluminum cans Americans use each year:

65 billion*

Percentage of aluminum soda cans that were recycled in the U.S. in 2008:

48.2

Percentage less energy it takes to make a can from recycled aluminum than to produce a new one from virgin materials:

90

Number of plastic bottles Americans throw away in an hour:

2.5 million

Number of years it’s estimated it will take for a plastic bottle to degrade in a landfill:

1,000

Pieces of plastic the UN Environment Program estimates float in every square mile of ocean (2006):

46,000

Number of plastic bags found in the stomach of a gray whale that beached near Seattle in April 2010:

20

Percentage of the world population that lives in the U.S.:

5

Percentage of the world’s timber and paper resources Americans consume:

33

Pounds of paper the average American uses every year (2002):

678

Pounds of paper the average South American uses every year (2002):

77

Pounds of paper the average African uses every year (2002):

8.8

Percentage of American paper waste that’s recycled (2008):

55.5

Click on the hyperlinks to see sources for statistics. *All other statistics were compiled by the Clean Air Council.

This is part of a series: Snapshots of America. Part one was A Snapshot of Car-Usage in America and part two was A Snapshot of Education in America.

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